


A Study of Tension in the Inversion of Compound Intervals

by cygnes



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Consent Issues, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:04:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8568853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: “His music did always have… an effect. It made you feel something. I can’t really explain it, but it was a deep feeling inside, like the thrumming of a string.”In 1984, Percy Black experiments with arcane mathematics in musical composition. The results are unexpected.Or: Reggie Erdman learns a thing or two about music.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Scenes from Reginald Erdman & Percival Black’s life as roommates, including the demonic musical equivalent of sex pollen. Originally posted [here](http://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/130922570280/fic-a-study-of-tension-in-the-inversion-of) on my tumblr, over a year ago. (Not backdated because backdated fics don't appear among my works, for some reason.) 
> 
> Warning for dubious consent of the sort inherent in the sex pollen trope, description of fairly minor injuries in the aftermath of non-explicit rough (& unprotected) sex, some dissociation/lost time, possible slight demonic possession. There's also Reggie & Percy's canonical age difference of about fifteen years, if that's something you want to avoid.

If you had asked him when they first met, Reggie wouldn’t have called Percy Black attractive. Percy was tall and gangling, and the effect was not improved by his head-foward carriage and a tendency to hunch his shoulders. It gave him the look of a carrion bird. He was also, by Reggie’s standards, an old man. Percy was in his early thirties, and Reggie was only edging up on twenty. 

Worse yet, Percy (who was a musician) seemed to be laboring under the delusion that their fields had something in common. He tried to engage Reggie more than once on the subject of mathematical application. The physics of sound were not so much part of Reggie’s purview, as an engineer. And esoteric applications of theoretical math? Even less so. Reggie hadn’t been especially kind when Percy brought up the latter topic. He might even have laughed a little. Percy hadn’t spoken to him for almost a week after that. 

Once they got past the initial awkwardness, though, Reggie and Percy got along rather well. Percy was clean and mostly kept to himself, which was (after Reggie’s previous and utterly disastrous roommate) an absolute joy. He also had an understated sense of humor when he did feel like talking. 

“You should come out with me sometime,” Reggie said. It was their second month living together. He felt like an ass for waiting so long to offer. “My friends would like you.” 

“Would they?” Percy said. “I’ve been told I’m an acquired taste.”

“Oh, you’re a bit of an odd duck,” Reggie said carelessly. “But not so odd I wouldn’t be seen with you.”

“What a compliment,” Percy said. He didn’t seem offended. 

But he kept turning down Reggie’s invitations. He was polite to Reggie’s friends when they were over, but disappeared back to his room or out on an invented errand as soon as he could disentangle himself from the conversation. Percy was better company when it was just the two of them, all told. He was a decent cook—the result of over a decade living on his own, without enough money for takeaway, and he was sometimes willing to share. He’d ask if Reggie needed anything when he went out shopping. And he always put the kettle on with enough water for two.

“Do you date, ever?” Reggie said. He was elbow-deep in problem sets and half out of his mind with worry about exams, even though they were still weeks away. He wasn’t really thinking about the question, just indulging idle curiosity.

Percy was silent for a long time. Long enough for Reggie to notice, and look up. Percy leaned against the doorjamb. He was very still. 

“Not for a while,” Percy said finally. 

“Girls?” Reggie said. 

“Not usually,” Percy said. He stayed where he stood, a mug in each hand. Reggie relieved him of one.

“That’s alright, then,” Reggie said. “Me, I usually date girls, but variety’s the spice of life, isn’t it?” He spoke lightly. His words were perhaps poorly chosen, but still seemed to put Percy at ease. “If there is someone, you don’t have to… I don’t know. Make him climb in your window.”

“There really isn’t,” Percy said. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”

It didn’t change anything. Not really. Percy remained reclusive and courteous and self-contained. Exams drew nearer and Reggie grew more frantic. One late and over-caffeinated night, he knocked on Percy’s door.

“I can pick this composition up in the morning,” Percy said, guessing the reason for the interruption. He still had his violin in one hand.

“No, for God’s sake,” Reggie said wildly. “Anything but that. Leave your door open. Play as loudly as you want. I need to stay awake.”

“If I played as loudly as I want to, we’d be evicted,” Percy said placidly. 

“Within reason, then. Don’t worry about me, is what I mean to say.” 

That’s how it was for the next week. Percy with his door open at all hours, practicing and composing and refining; Reggie pacing from room to room, studying and scribbling and worrying. Reggie discovered that Percy had unerringly perfect posture at the keyboard or holding his violin, but the moment that he was away from an instrument, he collapsed in on himself. Filtered through the haze of sleep deprivation, this seemed like the most important thing Reggie had ever learned about his roommate. 

And then it was the end of term. Reggie slept for sixteen hours after his last exam, and Percy kept quiet. 

“You going home?” Reggie said when he finally emerged, feeling somewhat more capable of human interaction than he had for the past few days. “For the holiday, I mean.”

Percy looked at him blankly. “I am home,” he said simply. He closed his door. Reggie was unaccountably angry. They didn’t see each other again before he left.

At home, given two weeks to mellow out and pick stupid fights with his family, that anger turned to guilt. Percy was very much alone. Reggie had been unkind to him—without meaning to, but the effect was the same. He decided to bring a gift to rebuild whatever bridge he might have singed, if not quite burned. The presumption of his gift only struck him when it was on the kitchen counter. 

“You do drink, don’t you?” Reggie said. His good intentions were reduced to uncertainty. “I know you don’t like going to pubs, but.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me,” Percy said archly. But his mouth twitched into a smile. For the first time since they’d met, Reggie felt thoroughly outmatched. 

“Well, if you’re not seeing anyone,” Reggie said. It was a feeble attempt at a joke.

“For future seductions, I prefer stout to lager,” Percy said. And just like that, the tension was gone. The sense of camaraderie was back. They went back to their former pattern of politeness and shared tea as though no secrets had been shared or offense had been given. Once in a while Percy would leave his door open. (Once in a while, Reggie would let himself admire Percy’s hands on the keyboard, or the long graceful lines of his body when he played violin. He often played with his eyes closed; Reggie didn’t have to worry about his admiration being noticed or—God forbid—returned.)

End of term rolled around again. 

“You going home?” Percy said.

“Not this time,” Reggie said. “If you were planning on having wild parties while I was gone, you’re out of luck.”

“I’m a bit old for that,” Percy said, smiling self-consciously. There was something uneasy in his manner. He drifted away, back to his own room. 

_Oh_ , Reggie thought, mood sinking: Percy _was_ planning to have someone over, probably, when he wouldn’t have to worry about interruptions. It made sense. Reggie almost changed his mind and started packing a suitcase right then. He didn’t, though. He went for long walks, spent whole days away from the flat, away from the university, out in the city proper. He stayed out of Percy’s way. Just in case. 

He came home one afternoon and Percy’s door was wide open. Percy’s eyes were closed. He was playing something wild on the violin. Reggie’s heart was hammering in his chest by the time he got to his own room. He didn’t close his door behind him. He fell over onto his bed in a daze, feeling strange. The music stopped suddenly, and he could breathe normally again. He got up to close his door, but then—

Then it started up again, on the keyboard this time. His skin felt hot and too tight. Percy stood there, dizzy and sweating and afraid. His heart beat fast and he didn’t know enough about music to know the time signature, but he was aware enough to know that the music and his heartbeat were keeping time. He thought he might be dying. Slowly, cautiously, he made his way back down the hall. He looked in Percy’s door and felt overwhelmed. He could almost see the flutter of the pulse in Percy’s neck. 

Reggie’s mouth went dry. He was overwhelmed with the desire to take; the desire to be taken. ( _The desire to consume; the desire to be consumed._ ) 

“Percy,” he said. Percy stopped playing, but the feverish, desperate, carnal want surging in Reggie’s veins didn’t stop. If anything, it increased when Percy turned to look at him, eyes wide and startled.

“I thought you were out,” Percy said hoarsely. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t seem sorry. He seemed as intently focused on Reggie as Reggie was on him. “I didn’t mean to bring you into this.”  

“Into what?” Reggie said, but he did not care about the answer at all. He advanced on Percy, who advanced on him. 

They met in the middle of the room with an uncomfortable knocking of knees and a kiss that was mostly teeth. Once they’d regained their bearings, Percy dedicated himself to touching as much of Reggie’s skin as he could without stopping to remove any clothing. Reggie tangled his hand in Percy’s hair and held him where he stood. He kissed Percy with a thoroughness that surprised him. Another surprise was his newfound determination to draw blood. He bit down on Percy’s lower lip until it split. (This didn’t take much time or effort. Percy’s lips were chapped already.) 

Percy didn’t try to pull away. He gasped and tongued at the small wound, surprised but not unhappy. He went to work on Reggie’s shirt buttons and then applied himself more diligently to the task of touching Reggie’s skin. It was not gentle. More grasping than caressing. Reggie didn’t mind. He didn’t register any pain: only the overwhelming hunger he felt reflected back at him. 

The more they touched, skin to skin, the more Reggie seemed to lose track of things. He lost track of his socks, he lost track of time. He lost track of what kinds of things he wouldn’t normally want to do. He lost track of his voice, which stopped being capable of words but made a lot of expressive sounds. He felt very alive. He felt out of control. But Percy was there with him the whole time, just as frightened and elated and lost to the immediate concerns of sensation.

Reggie didn’t remember falling asleep. More likely, he had passed out. He woke up feeling wrung-out and shaky.

“Christ, what time is it?” Reggie said. Percy stirred beside him. “I feel filthy.”

“You look filthy,” Percy said, equal parts smug and exhausted. “And it’s about five in the morning.” 

Five in the morning: a little over twelve hours since Reggie had arrived back at the flat.

The events of those twelve hours were marked out vividly on their bodies. A ring of bruises around Percy’s neck, blossoming into purple. The skin on his palms and knees rubbed shiny and raw. Nail marks scored down Reggie’s back and sides. More bruises, on his wrists and hips. 

“I‘m going to take a shower,” Reggie said. It seemed the most pressing concern. Percy took his hand very gently, stopping him from getting out of bed.

“It is you, isn’t it, Reggie?” Percy said. He pressed a kiss to Reggie’s knuckles. The gesture was unexpectedly tender. Deferential, even. 

“Who else would it be?” Reggie said. 

“I don’t know,” Percy said, drawing back. “An incubus, maybe.” It was a joke, because it had to be, but Percy said it like it was a real possibility.

“I’m glad you think my sexual prowess borders on the supernatural,” Reggie said as he sat up, cracking a smile. 

“It’s not prowess so much as appetite that concerns me,” Percy said. 

“Speak for yourself,” Reggie shot back.

He took a long look at himself in the bathroom mirror. He catalogued his many small hurts and tried to remember the details of how he got them. There was semen dried into his hair, which for some reason seemed more repulsive than anything else. By the time Reggie got out of the shower, Percy had put on a dressing gown and stripped the sheets off his bed.

“I’m debating whether to just burn them,” Percy said lightly. 

“Might not be worth trying to save,” Reggie agreed. Percy caught one of Reggie’s hands in both of his in that same oddly tender way. 

“You said once that you mostly go for women,” Percy said. 

“Mostly,” Reggie said. “Not exclusively. Why, afraid you’ve sullied my maiden virtue?”

“No,” Percy said. “I guess not.” For the first time in months, Reggie was acutely aware of how much older than him Percy was. The rhythms of their comfortable companionship had allowed him to forget. Percy dropped his hand and walked past him to the bathroom. 

They didn’t talk about it. Percy kept his door closed all the time after that. Reggie couldn’t bring himself to think too deeply about the whole situation. The new term started up and they avoided each other. Reggie had to get used to making his own tea again. Sometimes he’d stand outside Percy’s room, listening. The music now made him uneasy. It made him feel like there was someone watching him. He didn’t stop listening, though. He felt like if he stood there long enough, it might answer questions he didn’t know how to ask. 

If you had asked Reggie whether he found Percy attractive after they had lived together a year, he probably would have punched you in the mouth. 

One night, Percy opened the door and saw Reggie standing there. It was bound to happen eventually. Reggie almost wanted it to, just to get it over with. Maybe that was why he hadn’t moved when the music stopped. 

“What do you want?” Percy said. His voice was low and rough but more wary than threatening.

“Nothing,” Reggie said. “I just wanted to hear you play. You’re good at it.”

“What do you know about music?” Percy said with unexpected bitterness.

“Nothing,” Reggie said again. “Sorry.” Then, after a long moment of just staring at one another, he said, “Are you angry with me?”

“No,” Percy said. 

“Can we be friends again?” Reggie said. He sounded pathetic to his own ears. He was not like Percy: he had friends in his own department. By rights, Percy should be the one asking for his friendship. But he wasn’t, after all.

“Were we friends?” Percy said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“What we were, then. Friend _ly_ , if not friends.” 

“Fine,” Percy said, and went to close his door again. 

“Do you want some tea?” Reggie said, struck by inspiration. It was, he thought, the most obvious gesture of reconciliation that Percy would appreciate. “I was going to make some.”

“That would be nice,” Percy said cautiously. He didn’t go back to playing just then, but he left his door open. Reggie stayed in the doorway when he brought back two mugs for them. 

“Anyone climbing in your window these days?” Reggie said. He regretted the question (and its wording) immediately. 

“Not lately, no,” Percy said with a colorless smile. “Not since you. But you used the door.”

“Right,” Reggie said. “So I should just go, then.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Percy said, answering a question he hadn’t asked. “I’d rather be friends, or friendly.” 

“Okay, yeah,” Reggie said. “Kiss me and then tell me that again.” He didn’t have time to regret what he had said this time. Percy leaned down and kissed him, a dry press of chapped lips on his. 

“I’d rather be friendly,” Percy said as he pulled away. He looked a little sad. But only a little.

“Okay,” Reggie said, and handed him his tea. 

He started spending less time standing outside Percy’s room. When he made tea, he’d make enough for two. Most times the mug he left for Percy got cold. He would drink it himself, or pour it down the drain. He went out with the other engineers as often as he could manage while still mostly keeping up with his schoolwork. He met girls—no musicians, thank God. Sometimes he pretended he didn’t have a roommate. Percy made that easy. Reggie would go days without seeing him, sometimes. 

Until Percy started going out nights. Late nights. Reggie still didn’t see him much, but hearing the door open and close in the small hours of the morning at least reminded him that he didn’t live alone. He wasn’t jealous because he knew he had no reason to be. Even if Percy had a man somewhere (and that was a big _if_ , given his social skills), it was none of Reggie’s business. 

He was grateful for a while. He had been having strange dreams, and they never seemed as bad when Percy went out. Gratitude couldn’t last, though. It was bound to give way to curiosity. He would lie awake when the sounds of Percy going out woke him up. It was hard to imagine Percy outside of their narrow shared experience. On a certain blisteringly silent night, he gave up completely on trying to get back to sleep. He wandered out into the kitchen and stayed there, not thinking about anything in particular. He sat in the dark for over an hour.

Percy came in close to dawn. 

“Good morning,” Reggie said. Percy started violently at the sound of his voice. 

“What are you doing up?” Percy said, turning on the lights and squinting at him. Percy didn’t look well. Obviously tired, which made sense. But there was also a combination of fear and elation about him, a wire-tense energy, that seemed like subdued hysteria. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Reggie said simply. 

“You weren’t—” Percy hesitated. “Waiting for me?”

“Why would I wait for you?” Reggie said. 

“Right,” Percy said. “I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t you have class?” Reggie said. 

“No,” Percy said shortly. He shut himself in his room and Reggie thought, _right then_. Only one thing to do: find out what the hell Percy was up to. If it was a man, he’d let the matter alone. If it was drugs, he’d find a new roommate.

Percy didn’t go out again for a few nights. Reggie slept badly. He only ever remembered isolated moments from his dreams, like briefly glimpsed photographs. A sense of something looming, negative space blacker than surrounding darkness. Voices like the low, constant hum of insects; the certainty that they knew everything about him but that he could understand nothing about them. Empty spaces waiting as the air before a storm waits. 

Reggie had a hard time motivating himself to follow Percy when he went out, the night he finally did go after him. He’d been out with some of his classmates and would have been perfectly content to fall into a hard, dreamless sleep. He didn’t have that kind of sleep anymore, though. He convinced himself in short order that he had nothing to lose by following Percy. The bright moonlight helped. The several drinks he’d had helped. He didn’t think it was a dangerous proposition to turn around on his way home and instead follow his roommate into the unknown.

Percy didn’t keep to the city as Reggie had expected. It wasn’t a trip through sordid streets and hidden alleyways. Percy went out into the wild. Reggie followed. 

Following Percy seemed like less of a lark in the dense quiet of the woods. (He only thought later that there should have been more sound. Small animals moving in the underbrush, maybe. But there hadn’t been.) Reggie had hung back a bit, before they got to the woods, but suddenly that didn’t seem like such a viable option. He was seized by the worry that Percy would duck out of sight behind a tree and simply vanish. 

The woods opened out into a wide empty space. The effect was disorienting – it reminded Reggie, somehow, of his dreams. He stopped at the tree line and watched Percy walk out into the field. Tall grasses trembled and bowed to a breeze Reggie didn’t feel. The moonlight was bright, but it was still only moonlight. There were so many shadows on the ground. Not all of them seemed to be moving the way they were supposed to. Not all of them seemed to have a source.

Percy had walked slowly, steadily, toward some predetermined point in the middle of the field. When he stopped, it wasn’t abrupt. He turned. Despite the darkness, despite not noticing Reggie until then, he seemed to know exactly where Reggie was at that moment. Percy looked right at him. There was an eerie glint of light in his eyes, like a cat’s eyes in the dark. This wasn’t what frightened Reggie. What frightened Reggie was that all those strange shadows had stopped moving, too. And now not all of them seemed to be lying flat on the grass.

Reggie turned and ran. He fell more than once but didn’t let it stop him, scrambling forward in his panic until he righted himself. He didn’t stop running until he was back at the flat, back in his room, with the door locked and the window shut. 

He had no nightmares. He had no nightmares because he got no sleep. 

Reggie waited until well after dawn before venturing out of his room. Percy hadn’t come back. Reggie made himself some tea but couldn’t settle enough to drink it. He paced. He worried. He didn’t know anything about Percy’s family, or where he was from. If Percy had any friends he might visit, Reggie didn’t know them. 

He took a nap on the sofa around noon. It was the kind of hard, dreamless sleep that had eluded him for so long. He woke up off-balance and unhappy but fairly certain that he had misinterpreted what he had seen in the early hours of the day. He’d been drinking. The walk through the woods had made him predisposed to seeing strange things. Percy had been alone in the field: nothing he remembered could contradict that. He had no reason to think anything bad had happened, really. And if Percy didn’t come home in the next day or so, he could go to the police. There were rational, adult ways to handle this situation. 

The letter was in the mailbox when he came in from getting dinner. It might have been there in the morning, but he hadn’t thought to check.

_I will send someone by for my things. The enclosed money should cover my half of the upcoming month’s rent. Sorry for the short notice. Best of luck finding a new roommate._

_Regards,_  
P. Black  


It was Percy’s handwriting. Or it was a damn good forgery, anyway. Reggie thought, _well, fine_. He put up notices on the same boards that had netted him Percy and hoped for the best. 

The stranger showed up two days later. He was older than Reggie, but still probably closer to Reggie’s age than Percy’s.

“Hello,” the man said. “I’m here to pick up whatever Percival Black left behind.” He was amiable enough, with an inoffensive smile and sharply intelligent eyes.

Reggie let him in. “Friend of his, are you?” he said.

“Never met him,” the man said. “I got the job through a mutual friend.” This was a relief, somehow. 

“Let me know if you need any help,” Reggie said. The man didn’t ask for help. He managed fine with the violin and the keyboard and the books, the notebooks. Percy’s clothes fit neatly back into the suitcase he kept under his bed. 

“The furniture isn’t his, is it?” the man said.

“The room was mostly furnished, but he brought the desk,” Reggie said. 

“That’ll be trouble,” the man said. “I don’t think I have room for it in my car.”

“Oh,” Reggie said. “Sorry.”

“I’ll manage,” the man said. “Always do.”

“Do you want anything to drink?” Reggie said. It took him a long time to remember to play the good host.

“Water would be great, thanks,” the man said. He sat down at the little kitchen table and Reggie sat down across from him. He waited until the man had finished his glass before asking the question he wanted to ask.

“How do you know Percy’s friend?” Reggie asked. The man looked at him levelly, considering.

“I lived with John for a while,” the man said finally. Reggie didn’t think he meant it merely in the sense of sharing a flat. “We’ve kept in touch. He knows your Mr. Black from back when he had a band, I think.” 

“Sounds right,” Reggie said. “Percy’s a composer.”

“Sounds right,” the man echoed, agreeing. “You haven’t asked my name, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just—this whole business is awfully cloak-and-dagger,” Reggie said. “I didn’t think you’d tell me.”

“Just as well,” the man said. “I might have lied.”

Reggie watched him carry the desk out (a little old-fashioned secretary affair) and closed the door behind him. There was nothing of Percy left in the flat. He got a new roommate the following week. He and Brendan got along fine. Reggie dated a few girls, got plastered a few times a week, did his assignments, eventually got a work placement. He slept well. He got one letter from Percy a few months later, but it didn’t say much, except that Percy was joining a religious order. (There was a cassette tape with the letter; Reggie did not play it.)

He thought of Percy often, until he didn’t anymore. He never could stand instrumental music, though. 

“It’s just because you don’t know anything about it,” said the woman who would become his wife. “You might like it more if you did.”

“I know exactly as much as I have to,” Reggie said. He laughed, but he meant it.

**Author's Note:**

> Not that it has any real bearing on the story (or enough significance to count as a crossover), but if anyone's familiar with the original run of _Hellblazer_ , Percy's absent friend John is John Constantine. It seems plausible that they might have met on the music scene, back in John's time with Mucous Membrane, especially given their shared interest in the occult. 
> 
> I think it’s significant character-wise that John & Percy met and parted ways before the Newcastle incident, before John really learned exactly how bad the consequences of magic could get. John definitely didn’t know what Percy was up to when Percy got back in contact with him in 1985, or he wouldn’t have helped him out, even indirectly. (Not that John would really have the time/means to find out, because he was in America at the time doing _Swamp Thing_ stuff.)
> 
> John's friend who comes to move Percy's stuff, in turn, may or may not be R. J. Lupin. I just assume that John Constantine knew any and all fictional queer people doing ill-advised magic in Great Britain in the late 1970s.


End file.
